MSJC officials considering options for bookstores

The college bookstores at Mt. San Jacinto College’s two chief campuses are in trouble.

To put it more succinctly, they’ve lost money the last two years, forcing officials to ask MSJC's board of trustees to consider a number of options as college campus bookstores across the country struggle to compete against a number of online ventures taking large chunks out of colleges’ bookstore revenue streams.

“What we’re discovering with our bookstores, as most colleges in our area are, is we’re seeing a decline in numbers,” said Teri Sisco, associate dean of procurement and general services. “And we don’t like ending up in the negative numbers, so we’re doing everything we can to (lower) costs that we don’t need to have this year.”

Which means there are a number of options on the table, from partial to full outsourcing of services to the redesigning of business models that have yielded significant losses since 2011.

After reporting $225,000 in profits in 2009 and 2010, unaudited numbers show that MSJC’s bookstores in San Jacinto and Menifee lost $58,000 in 2011 and nearly $140,000 last year, rates of decline that Sisco attributes to the growing use of E-textbooks, state funding cuts that have forced the college to reduce course offerings and a large number of students flocking to price comparison websites, such as Amazon.com, to find cheaper alternatives.

For the time being, the board has directed MSJC's staff to put those options on hold pending further review of its bookstores' financial trends.

On top of that, a number of faculty members negotiate directly with publishers to offer less expensive books to students, cutting campus bookstores completely out of the loop, according to a report that Sisco prepared for MSJC’s board of trustees.

With considerable overhead costs, it all amounts to a storm that MSJC’s bookstores are struggling to weather.

“We’ve had a major slide,” Sisco said. “We do need to come up with something to get business back in the store.”

Although MSJC’s bookstores sell a number of items, from school apparel to basic school supplies, new and used textbook sales account for about 92 percent of the stores’ sales. While a new rental program -- which typically saves students’ 47 percent off new books’ prices -- has generated $184,000 the last two years, those numbers haven’t bridged gaps that are widening each year in new and used textbook sales.

After topping $2.5 million in new textbook sales revenue in 2009 and 2010, MSJC’s bookstores slipped to $1.7 million and $1.4 million the last two years. Likewise, used textbook revenues have seen 30 and 20 percent dips each of the last two years, while general merchandise sales dropped 27 percent last year.

At the Menifee Valley campus alone, supervisor Kathie Wellington-Maxon said her store has seen a 30 percent reduction in sales over the last year “due to decreased enrollment and students purchasing books at other places.”

Travis Flynt, 27, is among the MSJC students who turn to off-campus options -- such asAmazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s online store -- except when he sells his used books to MSJC’s store to save on postage.